• (cs)
    Matthew:
    It is all about reinstalling and rebooting with you Windows admins, isn't it? :-)

    Ever tried to uninstall software on Windows? That stuff never really goes away. Try it with a large software suite and the box basically becomes haunted. Phantom things happen. Much safer to wipe it clean.

    WTFNamingException:
    Hey it wasn't up to me! but I'm not a network admin so even if by some strange twist of fate they were to give me access to DNS admin on the LAN I'd probably screw it up. I just program computers man, sod domain administration, that's for grumpy star trek geeks.

    LOL. I'm not an admin, but we don't have one, either. I got semi-tasked with it because I'm the only software engineer here who happens to know networking, too. Unfortunately, the guy who knew the admin password also gave it to the entire SysOps department, so I'm always having to fix things that they screw up. I've complained about it, but "blind eye" is an understatement when it comes to those people.

    Feek:
    So what you're saying is that because you know Greek mythology, everyone else should, too? To be honest, I'm not completely sure how the Pandora thing relates, and I don't get the Prometheus at all. You're a real life BOFH, aren't you?

    No. It's a test to see if anyone knows anything besides partying. The way the people act around here, you'd think they were still in college - and I'm one of the youngest ones here! I wouldn't expect you to get the Prometheus one. The CTO keeps claiming the Engineering VP is a "genius", so I'm testing that, too.

    And nope, I'm not a BOFH. Just a software engineer who, per his boss, just recently started making a junior engineer's pay (even though I've been at this for quite a while). I'm also the person who volunteered to help the CFO at the time (he quit right before the first merger) to redo the entire network on modern hardware and with a domain instead of workgroup. Because of that, my name gets called whenever these people can't figure out why Outlook gives them an error message.

    At my last employer, a place of many WTFs, they have some machines in the server room which cannot be switched off for fear of what will happen. They are a pair of Apple Quadras, which weren't exactly server class machines when new. Someone vaguely remembers them being part of a data feed, but despite monitoring the network traffic to and from the machines nothing definite has been worked out as to their purpose. Management changes so frequently, and documentation is so scant, that each new head of IT decides it's better for the machines to be left alone rather than switch them off and wait to see who screams.

    Sweet! I'd do it just to see what happens.

  • michael schurter (unregistered)

    That whole long post and the punchline was a server named Unknown?

    The fact that I wasted my time reading it is the real WTF.

  • (cs) in reply to Feek
    Feek:
    AbbydonKrafts:
    I've started naming new computers with mythological names - but that relate to what they are. The people "in charge" of setting up computers around here are unimaginative and, surprise, use the user's name. My first one was ENG-PANDORA for our source repository. I've actually had to explain to many how the name relates. My current computer is going into dry heaves and having seizures, so I commandeered a new computer as a replacement. I named it ENG-PROMETHEUS. I'm waiting for the Engineering VP to get what I'm saying.

    So what you're saying is that because you know Greek mythology, everyone else should, too? To be honest, I'm not completely sure how the Pandora thing relates, and I don't get the Prometheus at all. You're a real life BOFH, aren't you?

    Finally, somebody who doesn't automatically reach for wikipedia when they see something they don't understand ... I salute you, sir.

    "Pandora" is pretty damn funny, whichever end of the box you look at. As for Prometheus: not sure how having your liver ripped out by an eagle equates to dry heaves and seizures, but perhaps it's less unpleasant than I'd been led to believe. At least a machine with that name is unlikely to be setting itself on fire any time soon, which is probably what's happening to that server room right now.

  • (cs) in reply to real_aardvark
    real_aardvark:
    "Pandora" is pretty damn funny, whichever end of the box you look at. As for Prometheus: not sure how having your liver ripped out by an eagle equates to dry heaves and seizures, but perhaps it's less unpleasant than I'd been led to believe. At least a machine with that name is unlikely to be setting itself on fire any time soon, which is probably what's happening to that server room right now.

    I thought Pandora would be appropriate to our source repository.

    The new computer is Prometheus, so I'm insinuating that I'm Promethean.

  • TimmyT (unregistered) in reply to null reference
    null reference:
    -gary:
    Sounds exactly like where I'm sitting right now except my company, for some unknown reason, uses Greek god names for the servers that leave no clue as to what they are or what they do.

    My company does that too ... the only one that kind of makes sense is Hermes, our Exchange server.

    What's wrong with friendly names for servers? I used to do the whole FCEX01 thing but the problem is no one ever understands the abbreviations and the names are hard for regular people to remember. Even after you explain it they still manage to screw it up. One of my techs who missed the Intro to Server Names class ended up naming the SQL Server FCEX02, not realizing that the "EX" was for "Exchange Server".

    We've discovered that friendly names with a theme makes it much easier for people to remember and it only takes one or two experiences with a server to link its name with its function. We use video games for our servers, and everyone knows that Tempest is the SQL server, just like everyone associates Bob with Accounting. The users have no problem with it either, so those rigid code names are really more trouble than they're worth.

    Names like "FCSQL01" can put someone in the...[captcha] Sanitarium

  • (cs)

    Ah, the triumph of hope over experience. It's a beautiful thing!

    Anyway, when I took over IT for a tv station, the server room (read, row of racks on one side of a normal, daily use room), was like this. Switches were hanging by Cat5 that was ziptied to the side of racks, everything was a mess, all that fun stuff. They had even run pairs of cables from a main switch to different switchs to help "boost speed."

  • Anonymous Tart (unregistered) in reply to -gary
    -gary:
    Sounds exactly like where I'm sitting right now except my company, for some unknown reason, uses Greek god names for the servers that leave no clue as to what they are or what they do.

    Lots of posts on server names, heres my take:

    server names name boxes, not roles. Therefore, you can name your servers whatever the heck you like. Its useful to name similar spec servers with similar names (so all our 'muppet' (kermit, elmo, etc) names are Dell 2950's with similar spec, raid controllers and disks).

    The trick is then to have service names in DNS for your roles. So, exchange.primary.svc.mydomain would be a good DNS alias for your primary exchange server. You can find out what physical box is serving that role by querying the name directory.

    eg $ host exchange-primary.svc.mydomain exchange-primary.svc.mydomain is an alias for fozzie.mydomain fozzie.mydomain has address 10.0.0.10

    Then all you need to do to migrate services from fozzie to misspiggie, all you need to do is configure misspiggie up, and switch the DNS alias.

    The other alternative is to run around the server room with stickers, relabeling everything.....

    Server room tidiness is normally a simple factor of money. You need probably 1 (decent!) guy per 50 servers whose sole job is looking after them, and you need enough money for rack kits. Once you fail on any of these counts, it normally goes titsup.

  • Anonymous Tart (unregistered) in reply to bob the dingo
    bob the dingo:
    Ah, the triumph of hope over experience. It's a beautiful thing!

    Anyway, when I took over IT for a tv station, the server room (read, row of racks on one side of a normal, daily use room), was like this. Switches were hanging by Cat5 that was ziptied to the side of racks, everything was a mess, all that fun stuff. They had even run pairs of cables from a main switch to different switchs to help "boost speed."

    And you didnt make it a condition of your starting that they allocated time+money for sorting that crap out? Craazy Maaan

  • craaazy (unregistered) in reply to Rodolpho Zatanas
    Rodolpho Zatanas:
    There's no reason to excuse ass-bad writing.
    Perhaps not, but if you don't like the bad writing, why are you here?
  • muhahaha (unregistered) in reply to Brian
    Brian:
    I worked at a place who's server room was such chaos that to find a specific server I would remote in, right click the CD drive and hit eject. Now just find the one with the drive tray open. This worked because our admin never put the front covers back on the rack mount boxes.
    When you were leaving, did you tell everyone your secret trick and then laugh when they all did it at the same time?
  • Single Male (unregistered) in reply to kirchhoff
    kirchhoff:
    Then, you use the MAGIC of DNS to give meaningful/purposeful names to the servers as aliases.

    mail.example.com -> apollo.example.com webserver1.example.com -> matrix.example.com dbserver.example.com -> matrix.example.com

    And when you get the new honking DB server, after testing, you just update the alias and everyone is magically using the new machine: dbserver.example.com -> behemoth.example.com

    Or is this idea too "novel"? Am I FREAKING ANYBODY OUT? Learn to manage your shit people. Use the tools effectively.

    Wow! Let's try that great new idea!

    ssh:
    @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@    WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED!     @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY!
Someone could be eavesdropping on you right now (man-in-the-middle attack)!

    Windows actually produces error messages that, at first glance, appear to blame the user for having the wrong authentication tokens. Even better, the namespace for both authentication and filesystem access seems to depend on the client correctly guessing the host name of the server.

    DNS aliasing is a wonderful idea for protocols where the client doesn't need to know or validate the server's identity; however, it kind of sucks for the major new protocols (most of which are based on SSL), since they usually include some kind of client validation of server identity. You would need to update the client's security certificates at the same time as the server's DNS alias, or have the client check against a list. Most SSL clients and server implementations that I've used seem to lack a way to support this, other than to say "anything signed by CAxyz is OK."

  • Single Male (unregistered) in reply to Mark G
    Mark G:

    Damn! What kind of tape is that, that doesn't peel off the wall after a few days?

  • Sgt. Preston (unregistered) in reply to -
    -:
    Colour coded cables are your friends :-)
    Colour coding helps, but is limited by the number of available colours. I like to attach a descriptive label at both ends (or every end) of each cable. Each label says what is (supposed to be) attached at the opposite end. That way I don't have to physically trace wires.
  • (cs) in reply to Single Male
    Single Male:
    DNS aliasing is a wonderful idea for protocols where the client doesn't need to know or validate the server's identity; however, it kind of sucks for the major new protocols (most of which are based on SSL), since they usually include some kind of client validation of server identity. You would need to update the client's security certificates at the same time as the server's DNS alias, or have the client check against a list.
    How about copying the server's security certificate from the old to the new one?
  • (cs)

    Regarding the greek naming scheme: My whole team once had our project and personal shares moved from Zeus to Hades.

  • asdf (unregistered) in reply to Older than thou
    Older than thou:
    skeletal crewquote

    holy crap, skeletons work for the government? Or did you mean skeleton crew?

  • Feek (unregistered) in reply to amandahugginkiss
    amandahugginkiss:
    Feek:
    How difficult is it to point out how much money is lost from the current configuration and how much would be saved if it was set up correctly? It's as simple as telling whatever PHB needs to be told "It's taking me 30 minutes to do a 10 minute job because of that mess. I need time to clean it". See how quickly telling your boss that you're wasting time gets it cleaned up.

    You live in a land of rainbows and fairytales.

    We've had our service department halved in a year, despite the pre-halving department working overtime every day and asking for more staff. Service, Sales, R&D, external distributors are all begging for more Service staff. Sales and distributors lose face because we can't fix things fast. R&D can't get products out on time because they've had to shoulder support load. Service need staff because they're all going insane trying to do the work in addition to having to do reports demanded by management so management can figure out why the fault is happening (despite clear and vocal demand from multiple directions for more service staff).

    You think this is how most companies work, and I'm in the land of rainbows and fairytales? Yes, there are a lot of overworked people out there, but not to the point where everyone in the company is dropping the ball. If I were you, I'd get out of there...it doesn't sound like the company is going to be floating for long.

    amandahugginkiss:
    "Explain it to your boss" is a far cry from "acceptance from your boss.

    The idea being that if you explain it to your boss, you get the acceptance. Maybe it's the way you're approaching that explanation? The boss understands that if he demonstrably saves the company money, his boss and his boss' boss will be happy. You're telling me that a little more job security isn't going to make him jump at the chance? Try appealing to his selfish side.

  • Feek (unregistered) in reply to real_aardvark
    real_aardvark:
    Feek:
    So what you're saying is that because you know Greek mythology, everyone else should, too? To be honest, I'm not completely sure how the Pandora thing relates, and I don't get the Prometheus at all. You're a real life BOFH, aren't you?
    Finally, somebody who doesn't automatically reach for wikipedia when they see something they don't understand ... I salute you, sir.
    My Spidey sarcasm sense is tingling, and I don't know why. ;)

    My all-too-subtle point was if I have to sit around and research a computer's name before I can use it, that's a waste of my time I could be using to get my work done.

    Maybe I'm just old and crochety, but I prefer to have the computers on my network named along the lines of domain/use/number (i.e. DOMSQL03 or DOMMAIL01). Since every location gets it's own child domain, I don't even worry about putting in the office/location of the server.

  • Kaenneth (unregistered)

    I should start naming servers after famous serial killers...

  • (cs) in reply to Kaenneth
    Kaenneth:
    I should start naming servers after famous serial killers...
    Sorry... too late!
  • gotcha (unregistered) in reply to IQpierce
    IQpierce:
    This is precisely the type of DailyWTF article I hate.

    Get over your mistaken belief that the writing on this site is inherently humorous. It's bad enough when you write a long-ass article where the actual funny thing is drowned in your lame attempts at humor in the form of flowery, over-dramatic prose... But today we get nothing BUT the crappy, overreaching writing. The "story" boils down to:

    "There's this guy, and at his job, they have a really bad server room. I mean REALLY bad! Things are, liked, stacked on each other! And look at some of the names of the servers! They're really ridiculous!"

    Your lame-ass attempts at humor through hyperbole add zero entertainment value to the crappy story that some retard puked out of his ass. F minus.

    Get up from the chair, and remove the dildo.

  • Grig Larson (unregistered)

    I used to work for a company that had huge sets of data centers. Some of these places were the size of indoor football fields, and almost all of them were neat and clean.

    They accomplished this by hiring a staff of mysterious people in matching polo shirts. These people's jobs were simply to manage the data center nuts and bolts. They were not programmers, they were not A+ certified, but they were skilled men and women who kept everything cool, clean, and safe.

    For instance, if you installed a server, you didn't have to do anything but hook it up to the right power circuit and network switch. Sloppy as you like. No rackmounts, wires a-dangling, server leaning on another server, no matter. Within a few days, you would return to see your server had either been rackmounted or given a shelf, and had all cords zip tied and tucked neatly away. They even knew what color the cat5 was supposed to be based on what switch it was connected to. Somehow they did this without any noticeable network drop.

    You saw these people from time to time, moving about and working under the floor, but for the most part, they were pretty innocuous like Oompa-Loompas.

    The effect was eerie; it was like the data center healed itself.

  • Feek (unregistered) in reply to Grig Larson
    Grig Larson:
    You saw these people from time to time, moving about and working under the floor, but for the most part, they were pretty innocuous like Oompa-Loompas.

    The effect was eerie; it was like the data center healed itself.

    For some reason this reminds me of those IBM ads they have in the magazines where it shows "Bob" (or whatever his name is), and his team in various outlandish situations. The diary is off to the side of the ad, and has entires about what we're seeing in the ad.

    "The servers have come alive, and they're taking over..."

  • TSM (unregistered) in reply to -gary

    Sounds like someone is addicted to God of War. Long Live Kratos, the big bad P570!!!

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    I guess the WTF? is WTF is this collections of sentences doing on this site?

  • RMW (unregistered)

    My old school had a nice clean server room with no trailing wires, no mess, no error messages, for a few days, until they wired it all in, then it resembled the Amazonian rainforest(in size, amount of undergrowth , and deadly things quota)

  • (cs) in reply to Jasmine
    Jasmine:
    Overall it's kind of stupid and hearkens back to the days when geeky code names almost always came from some other geeky interest, like mythology or comic books. There's a whole lot of servers out there with copyrighted names.
    AbbydonKrafts:
    So, anyone visiting that area would see this professionally embossed sign, complete with Braille, that contains a copyrighted Star Trek term.

    Augh! Trademark, not copyright! Totally different, and totally legal to use in this way (it's only stepping into trademark if your use of the term could be confused with theirs, and until DC creates a line of rack servers named Batman, that's very unlikely).

    rgz:
    codemoose:
    Email:
    pix plz kthnx
    To paraphrase Melvin Udall, people who talk in abbreviations ought to shampoo my crotch.

    y? u mean like wtf? stfo!

    stfu n gtfo posr

    cklam:
    Hey guys, here is one of the sad little muppets who fuck their server room - isn't he cute .... so angry.

    Uh? Come again?

  • (cs) in reply to foxyshadis

    I've been looking for a way to contact Jake and can't find one, so I'd just like to say that when you have to pad a story with an extra 500 flowery words because there's no meat, maybe you should just drop it and either skip a day or run a classic instead. It's insulting and degrading to you to have to run such content-free stories. Or better yet, post them on the sidebar (without all the cutesy wutesy). where the bar is quite a bit lower; it would've fit in great there.

  • (cs)

    I like to name my machines after girl anime chars. And my switches after guys. Then again, it's home network and no one else cares.

    buzer@haruhi:~$ dig @localhost home axfr

    ; <<>> DiG 9.3.4 <<>> @localhost home axfr ; (1 server found) ;; global options: printcmd home. 604800 IN SOA haruhi.serv.home. root.haruhi.serv.home. 2007060411 604800 86400 2419200 604800 home. 604800 IN NS ns1.home. lain.buzer.home. 604800 IN A 192.168.0.102 hagumi.home. 604800 IN CNAME hagumi.wlan.home. haruhi.home. 604800 IN CNAME haruhi.serv.home. lacus.home. 604800 IN CNAME lacus.wlan.home. lain.home. 604800 IN CNAME lain.buzer.home. hades.lauri.home. 604800 IN A 192.168.0.201 ns1.home. 604800 IN CNAME haruhi.serv.home. rei.home. 604800 IN CNAME rei.serv.home. ayato.router.home. 604800 IN A 192.168.0.4 ayato.router.home. 604800 IN TXT "Buffalo WHR-G54S" kira.router.home. 604800 IN A 192.168.0.3 kira.router.home. 604800 IN TXT "Zyxel P-660HW-D1" yuki.router.home. 604800 IN A 192.168.0.2 yuki.router.home. 604800 IN TXT "HLA-BR1000" haruhi.serv.home. 604800 IN A 192.168.0.1 s1.switch.home. 604800 IN CNAME yuki.switch.home. s2.switch.home. 604800 IN CNAME kira.switch.home. s3.switch.home. 604800 IN CNAME ayato.switch.home. s4.switch.home. 604800 IN CNAME satsohi.switch.home. satoshi.switch.home. 604800 IN A 192.168.0.10 satoshi.switch.home. 604800 IN TXT "Cisco 2900XL" hagumi.wlan.home. 604800 IN A 192.168.0.161 lacus.wlan.home. 604800 IN A 192.168.0.151 sakura.wlan.home. 604800 IN A 192.168.0.152 home. 604800 IN SOA haruhi.serv.home. root.haruhi.serv.home. 2007060411 604800 86400 2419200 604800 ;; Query time: 9 msec ;; SERVER: 127.0.0.1#53(127.0.0.1) ;; WHEN: Mon Jun 4 21:09:21 2007 ;; XFR size: 27 records (messages 1)

    buzer@haruhi:~$

  • (cs) in reply to null reference
    null reference:
    dkf:
    null reference:
    the only one that kind of makes sense is Hermes, our Exchange server.
    I read that as if the mail server was called "Herpes", and thought that that made perfect sense...

    ROFL. That would be even funnier if it was a Lotus Notes server.

    or the DB server, if the DB software were Orable :D

  • John (unregistered) in reply to Scott

    Still waiting for cables? Check out the prices for CAT5e cables at http://www.cyberguys.com/templates/searchproducts.asp?categoryID=125 (or just http://www.cyberguys.com/ ).

    I heard an NPR radio article about the now-closed CompUSA, and how they charged $40 for a 25-foot CAT5 cable. No wonder they closed! Cyberguys charges $5.48 for theirs--and your choice of colors! Save some money. Yeah, not as cool things as ThinkGeek, but they have a good catalog and decent prices.

  • John (unregistered) in reply to Pingmaster

    Don't you mean Oral-cle?

  • John (unregistered) in reply to Pingmaster
    Pingmaster:
    null reference:
    dkf:
    null reference:
    the only one that kind of makes sense is Hermes, our Exchange server.
    I read that as if the mail server was called "Herpes", and thought that that made perfect sense...

    ROFL. That would be even funnier if it was a Lotus Notes server.

    or the DB server, if the DB software were Orable :D

    Don't you mean Oral-cle?

    (sorry about the previous non-quote)

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